Record-breaking SIG-Marcomms & Global PR Network meeting in Linz.

The value of face-to-face knowledge exchange was proved in the joint meeting of the marketing communications special interest group and the global PR network on 2 June in Linz, Austria, following this year’s networking conference TNC17. The record-breaking meeting featured ‘flipped’ discussions that gave presenters the chance to seek advice and ideas from the audience, with Eastern countries in the central spotlight.

Around 40 people from 27 organisations across 5 world regions joined in the meeting, with record attendance by non-European and first-time participants. Taking advantage of the opportunity to follow the TNC schedule before attending this meeting, participants shared their conference highlights and explored possible follow up actions in the areas of storytelling with data, cloud services, and campaigns to involve students in community events.

Feedback that had been received during a TNC side meeting about the global In The Field stories blog site was presented by AARNet and CANARIE. The blog site had had a very positive response from the conference attendees and the joint meeting participants discussed ideas for improving it further.

Eastern focus

EaPConnect project panelists take answers from SIG-Marcomms and Global PR network at the joint meeting on 2 June in Linz.

How can national research and education networks (NRENs) compete with commercial internet providers? How can they show customer institutions and funders that they provide added value? Representatives of NRENs from the Eastern Partnership Connect (EaPConnect) project formed a panel that consulted the audience on a variety of such communications challenges affecting their organisations. With a range of suggestions to choose from, they were satisfied that some could be put into practice, and were enthusiastic about this their first experience of participating in a GÉANT community working group.

More advice was sought in a presentation about Asi@Connect – formerly known as the Trans-Eurasia Information Network (TEIN), which represents 27 NRENs. With a view to setting up a regional network of marketing communications practitioners that could interact with SIG-Marcomms and other regional groups, practical starting steps were suggested.

The Central Asian Research and Education Network, CAREN, the Singapore NREN, SingAREN, and the New Zealand network REANNZ gave presentations about their marketing communications activities, participating in one of these meetings for the first time.

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